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The 2019 National Convention of the Democratic Socialists of America
USA PoliticsOver the past two years, DSA has doubled its membership from 25,000 to 40,000, and that expansion translated into an increase in the number of delegates to the convention, from 700 to 1,000. The election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018 and Rashida Tlaib in 2019, both members of the DSA, to the House of Representatives helped spur the organization’s growth. Many of the delegates were new members attending their first convention.
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The Untold Story of the Trump-Ukraine Scandal: The Routine Corruption of US Foreign Policy
USA PoliticsWhat’s not being talked about in the mainstream is the context of this story, which shows that Biden should indeed be investigated in both Ukraine and in the United States. We know from the leaked 2014 telephone conversation between Victoria Nuland, then assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, that Biden played a role in “midwifing” the U.S.-backed overthrow of an elected Ukrainian government.
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The Problem With Impeachment
USA PoliticsImpeaching Donald Trump would do nothing to halt the deep decay that has beset the American republic. It would not magically restore democratic institutions. It would not return us to the rule of law. It would not curb the predatory appetites of the big banks, the war industry and corporations. It would not get corporate money out of politics or end our system of legalized bribery. It would not halt the wholesale surveillance and monitoring of the public by the security services
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Seattle and the Socialist Surge in the U.S.
SocialismOur campaign platform ends with a clear condemnation of this system: “Capitalism has failed the 99%. Socialists fight for a fundamentally different kind of society, based on democracy, equality, sustainability and solidarity.” A victory in Seattle, re-electing Sawant, will be a victory for workers and socialists everywhere. It will be one further step toward ending the misrule of capitalism and replacing this system with a truly democratic, socialist society capable of meeting the needs of all people and the planet.
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U.S. Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses
GlobalizationUnlike medieval serfdom, people subject to this End of History scenario can choose to live wherever they want. But wherever they live, they must take on a lifetime of debt to obtain access to a home of their own, and rely on U.S.-sponsored control of their basic needs, money and credit by adhering to U.S. financial planning of their economies. This dystopian scenario confirms Rosa Luxemburg’s recognition that the ultimate choice facing nations in today’s world is between socialism and barbarism.
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US vs. China: From Tariff War to Economic War
AsiaTrump’s trade wars and other policies should be understood as part of a broad reordering of US economic and political policies, and relations with other nation States allied and adversary alike, to ensure the continuation of US global economic and military hegemony for the coming decade. Nextgen technology development is at the core of that restructuring and restoration of US hegemony. Trump is just the appearance, the historic vehicle, behind the deeper global capitalist transformation in progress.
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This 4th of July: A letter from Richard D. Wolff
USA PoliticsThe Trump/GOP regime, desperately trying to “make America great again,” has chosen to make independence aggressive. It has attacked not an old King George representing a dying monarchism, but rising Chinese competitors. It has attacked poor immigrants and refugees mocking the words written on the Statue of Liberty. It celebrates extreme wealth, extreme inequality, and deregulated profiteering at home and extreme right-wing and repressive governments from Brazil to Hungary.
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Who Is Reporting That Trump Sanctions Have Killed Thousands of Venezuelans?
Latin America and the CaribbeanI wrote on June 14 about Reuters burying a study by economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot that links US-imposed economic sanctions on Venezuela in August 2017 to an estimated 40,000 deaths by the end of 2018. The study is the clearest evidence of the devastating impact US policy is having on the people of Venezuela. Below is a list of English-language outlets that, according to the Nexis news database, mentioned the study as of June 17. They are overwhelmingly non-US outlets.
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Trump’s Trade Threats are Really Cold War 2.0
GlobalizationTrump’s trade tantrum is that other countries are simply following the same economic strategy that once made America great, but which neoliberals have destroyed. U.S. negotiators are unwilling to acknowledge that the United States has lost its competitive industrial advantage and become a high-cost rentier economy. Its GDP is “empty,” consisting mainly of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) rents, profits and capital gains while the nation’s infrastructure decays and its labor is reduced to a part-time “gig” economy.
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U.S. Sanctions: Economic Sabotage That Is Deadly, Illegal, and Ineffective
USA PoliticsWe firmly believe that no combination of these or any other rationale can ever justify the genocidal human cost of economic sanctions in Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela or anywhere else. While the world condemns the recent attacks on the oil tankers and tries to identify the culprit, global condemnation should also focus on the country responsible for the deadly, illegal and ineffective economic warfare at the heart of this crisis: the United States.
